Lot 03207

First geodetic maps of the Greek areas. In 1684 and after the Austrian victories against the Turks in Hungary, a strong Venetian army, under Morosini, launched an attack from the Ionian islands towards western and southern Greece (under the Ottoman rule) conquering Lefkada island in 1684 and some places around Amvrakikos gulf, before conquering Peloponnesus and Athens. This army, with many European mercenaries serving, was also equipped with a fine Engineer officers team, trained for geodetic measurements, that have produced the first geodetic (at least partly) maps of Greek areas. Most of these maps were manuscript and sent to Venice just after their creation on field. Few years after, Coronelli V. M.. Cosmographer of the Republic of Venice, that had access to the Venetian archives and these accurate manuscript maps, published the following 2 maps without mentioning the primary sources.[Alberti Sebastian], Coronelli V. M., “Isola di S. Maura”, 60x46cm, Venice 1688. Just after conquering Lefkada, Morosini ordered an accurate new map of the island. A team under the leadership of the engineer Sebastian Alberti will take two years, to complete the necessary systematic land survey measurements, and finally to produce in 1688 the first accurate map of the island. The original manuscript map has been kept in the Venetian archives up to the end of the Republic, when it was taken to Vienna (now at the Wien State Archives). Based on Alberti’s manuscript map, Coronelli V. M. published the current map in the 1690s (Όλγα Κατσιαρδή Hering, «Η λευκάδα στη βενετική χαρτογραφία 1686-1729», στο «Χαρτογραφίες της Ανατολικής Μεσογείου», 2004). Zacharakis 1048.